In Law School, Obama Found Political Voice

By JODI KANTOR

Published: January 28, 2007

EDITORS' NOTE APPENDED

The peers who elected Barack Obama as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review say he was a natural leader, an impressive student, a nice guy. But in the 1990 Revue -- the graduating editors' gleeful parody of their elite publication -- they said quite a bit more.

''I was born in Oslo, Norway, the son of a Volvo factory worker and part-time ice fisherman,'' a mock self-tribute begins. ''My mother was a backup singer for Abba. They were good folks.'' In Chicago, ''I discovered I was black, and I have remained so ever since.''

After his election, the Faux-bama says, he united warring students into ''a happy, cohesive folk,'' while ''empowering all the folks out there in America who didn't know about me by giving a series of articulate and startlingly mature interviews to all the folks in the media.''

In his two memoirs and the biographical video on his Web site, Senator Obama's legal education is barely a blip, one of the least known chapters of his life. But for the Illinois Democrat who is all but certainly running for the presidency, Harvard was the place where he first became a political sensation.

He arrived there as an unknown, Afro-wearing community organizer who had spent years searching for his identity; by the time he left, he had his first national news media exposure, a book contract and a shot of confidence from running the most powerful legal journal in the country.

As the ribbing in the Revue suggests, Mr. Obama was realizing the power of his own biography. He proved deft at navigating an institution scorched with ideological battles, many of which revolved around race. He developed a leadership style based more on furthering consensus than on imposing his own ideas. Surrounded by students who enjoyed the sound of their own voices, Mr. Obama cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once.

Friends say he did not want anyone to assume they knew his mind -- and because of that, even those close to him did not always know exactly where he stood. It is a tendency that could prove perilous on the campaign trail, as voters, rivals and the news media try to fix the positions of a senator with only two years in office.

''He then and now is very hard to pin down,'' said Kenneth Mack, a classmate and now a professor at the law school, referring to the senator's on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand style.

Charles J. Ogletree Jr., another Harvard law professor and a mentor of Mr. Obama, said, ''He can enter your space and organize your thoughts without necessarily revealing his own concerns and conflicts.''

Many of his former professors and classmates say they are cheering on Mr. Obama, 45, in his candidacy. But the skills he displayed in law school may not serve him as well in American presidential politics, which sometimes rewards other qualities -- like delivering sound bites instead of deliberateness or fidelity to a base of supporters instead of compromise.

The law review is ''fairly disconnected from the breadth and the rough and tumble of real politics,'' said Bruce Spiva, a former review editor who now practices civil rights law in Washington. ''It's an election among a closed group. It's more like electing a pope.''

Mr. Obama declined to comment about his time at Harvard. He arrived at the law school in 1988 with a well-inked passport -- he had grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia, son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother -- and years of community organizing experience in Chicago, making him, at 27, an elder statesman among the students who had tested and term-papered their way straight there.

Mr. Obama spent much of his time alone, curtailing his dating life after his first summer, when he met his future wife, a Harvard Law graduate named Michelle Robinson who was working in Chicago. He often played pickup basketball, replacing his deliberative off-court style with sharp elbows and aggressive grabs for the ball.

Along with 40-odd classmates, he won a precious spot on the law review at the end of his first year through grades and a writing competition. But the next year, when other students implored him to run for the presidency, he demurred; he wanted to return to community work in Chicago, he said, and the credential would be no help. Late in the process, he finally agreed, saying he might be uniquely able to heal the review's partisan divisions.

The election was an all-day affair with the ego-crushing drama of a reality TV show. Inside Pound Hall, the editors picked apart the intellectual and social skills of the 19 contenders, eliminating them in batches. At the last moment, the conservative faction, its initial candidates defeated, threw its support to Mr. Obama. ''Whatever his politics, we felt he would give us a fair shake,'' said Bradford Berenson, a former associate White House counsel in the Bush administration.

The two finalists were invited back into the room. But before the winner could be announced, Mr. Mack, a black student who had rejoined the editors after being eliminated, lunged toward Mr. Obama, so moved by the barrier that had just fallen that he embraced him tightly, tears streaming down both men's cheeks.

Editors' Note: January 30, 2007, Tuesday
A front-page article on Sunday reported on Barack Obama's years at Harvard Law School. It included a quotation from Ron Klain, former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, who said that Mr. Obama's inclusive leadership style as president of the Harvard Law Review would not be as effective in running a country.

The Times later learned that Mr. Klain is an informal adviser to Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, who is expected to announce on Wednesday that he is running for president. Mr. Klain's affiliation with the Biden campaign should have been disclosed in the article.

Also, a picture caption with the continuation of the article misstated the timing of the photograph, taken in the apartment of one of Mr. Obama's friends. It was taken during the 1990 midterm elections, not during the 1990 election for the Harvard Law Review.